


Embers in Ash

by TheBraillebarian



Series: Phoenix Burning [1]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Rough Sex, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:27:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29118969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBraillebarian/pseuds/TheBraillebarian
Summary: To ashes the phoenix falls, from ashes it rises again. Between death and rebirth, the embers burn.orCharles comes back from the dead and the welcome he gets from Pickles is not what either of them expect.
Relationships: Charles Foster Offdensen/Pickles the Drummer
Series: Phoenix Burning [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2161272
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Embers in Ash

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to HeyMurphy, Insomniac-Pens, ThisisVenereVeritas, and the Hammertooth Rats for encouraging me while I metaphorically punched myself in the face writing this painful thing!

After nine months away, presumed dead, Charles is surprised to find his office so untouched. He expected the boys to have ransacked it or at least rummaged through his papers. Instead he finds it almost pristine save for a thin layer of dust. Even the shelf of cheap lamps is untouched. His office couch is the only piece of furniture that seems to have been used, the red and black afghan he kept folded on its back currently wadded by one arm. The obvious use makes his heart sink; only one person has ever sat curled under that afghan. 

Something shifts by the window and he flinches at the sound of his desk chair turning. Almost dwarfed by the burgundy leather, stone-faced with eyes sunken and bruised from lack of sleep, is Pickles. Warmth rises in his chest at the sight, immediately doused with uncertainty. In more than twenty years he’s never seen that dour look, boding nothing but ill, directed his way. 

"Welcome back, chief," Pickles’ voice is brittle and flat.

“Ah. Thank you. Did you, ah, need something?”

Pickles doesn’t move but Charles subtly shifts his feet into a fighting stance, an uncertainty in the air putting his nerves on edge. Something in Pickles’ rigid posture suggests violence. This isn’t the homecoming he expected. Instead of answering Pickles seems to give up, rising only to walk out the door. 

“Good show tonight,” Charles says to his back, hopeful. 

Pickles’ shoulders tense but he keeps walking. 

…

Charles has never believed in ghosts but he is becoming intimately familiar with what it is to be haunted. Pickles drifts in and out of his office over the next several days, no words on his lips but a palpable and sullen anger radiating off him. Sometimes Charles stumbles from his connected suite to find the man sitting on his old office couch in the same position he’d been in hours before, eyes sunken and staring at nothing. He feels guilty for the relief that washes over him when the room is empty. 

If Pickles is eating or doing drugs, Charles doesn’t know when or where. Sometimes he darts into the room wild eyed and panicked only to give Charles a baleful glare before wandering out. It seems both a mercy and a curse that Charles has so much work tethering him to his office. He wonders what Pickles might do if he were to come in and find Charles absent and knows nothing good would come of it. 

On more than one weary night he wakes to see a pale, freckled back at the edge of his bed. He sleeps poorly whether green eyes watch him from the dark or not. Exhaustion blankets him like a shroud, as heavy as it was in all his time away but without the reassurance that it will end. 

Occasionally he catches sight of Pickles on a security feed standing alone in a corridor. He looks as lost and stupid with exhaustion as Charles feels. He wanders aimlessly in his own home or stands for long minutes with a distant look in his eyes. Inevitably, dreadfully, he comes back to Charles’ office to pace the corners or curl his lip in seeming disdain before sinking into numb silence on the couch. 

When Charles has lunch brought up it’s always for two. The second plate goes untouched. 

“They’re, ah, rock and roll fries,” he says somewhat desperately over his burger one afternoon. 

Pickles rises from his huddle on the couch and leaves without looking at him. 

...

The way Pickles undresses over the course of time is both an art and a mystery. Items of clothing disappear off him in ever changing patterns: a shirt here, pants there, one sock on while the other foot is bare in its shoe. Charles has been watching him divest himself of garments all day, only aware of the location of his jeans and one shoe. Pickles is lounging on the couch in nothing but his underwear, idly picking through a bowl of candy resting on his bare stomach, eating none of it. 

Charles sits at his desk, tie off and shirt sleeves rolled up. He feels almost hopeful in the calm, like he’s on the cusp of exhaling the tension that’s been dogging him. Something pings off his glasses with a sharp click. A piece of candy rolls off the desk. Another bounces off the pen in his hand. 

Pickles’ sneer is a nasty show of teeth, his eyes flat and cold. He stares Charles down and casually flicks a piece of candy at his face. Charles snatches it from the air and drops his fist to the desk with more force than intended. 

“Pickles,” his voice is tight. “You are a grown man.” The next piece bounces off his chest. “If you cannot behave yourself in my office, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Oh, yer gonna ask?” A rather impressive ricochet that bounces candy off the desk to hit Charles’ chin. “Considerate of ya.”

Two solid pings right off his glasses. Charles gets to his feet. “That’s enough.”

“Ya gonna tell me somethin’ now, Charlie?” He says the name like an insult, lip curled. 

Charles crosses to the sofa in quick strides. The look on Pickles’ face is a challenge, hand carding through the bowl as Charles looms over him. He raises his hand, sugared pellet between finger and thumb. Charles grabs his wrist and the atmosphere goes cold with the narrowing of Pickles’ eyes. 

“I ain’t gonna ask twice.” His voice is low, dangerous, the candy flicked away. “Let. Go.”

He knows better, has seen a dozen people on this side of an angry Pickles, but he’s exhausted and wants to make a point. “Are you going to stop?”

The strike is fast, Pickles’ lunge sending the candy bowl clattering hollowly to the floor. Charles snatches the fist aimed at his head and realizes his mistake too late. Where anyone else might try to pull away, Pickles leaps forward, throwing his weight into Charles’ torso and trying to crack their skulls together. He slips on the candy and Pickles’ momentum carries them both down. Charles manages to roll before he is pinned and crushes his unexpected opponent to the ground, belatedly releasing Pickles’ wrists in favour of holding down his shoulders. 

Hands seize his collar, rip down with enough force to scatter buttons among the other debris. Confused, foolish enough to hope, Charles leans forward. Expecting a bite, hoping for a kiss, he is not prepared for Pickles to strike him with a closed fist to the gut. Grunting, he grabs the offending wrist again, slams it on the floor, and watches the world jolt sideways at the blow to his head, glasses skittering away. Jaw clenched, Charles grabs Pickles’ other hand and finally pins him, one thing he’d sworn he would never do. 

“Is this what you want?!” He grits between clenched teeth. 

“Oh ya fuckin’ care what I want now?!” Pickles spits, jerking his hips up to slam against Charles’ painfully. 

“Fine.”

He jerks away, letting go long enough to throw off his ruined shirt and yank down his pants. Pickles viciously pulls down his own underwear and lunges at Charles. He’s free enough to do what he must, shamefully half hard already, and throws himself forward to slam Pickles back down by the shoulders. 

Neither of them is quite ready for this. Pickles is just a little too tight and Charles’ blind thrust makes the man under him grunt. In an instant he realizes what he's doing, what he's already done, and tries to pull away only for legs to tangle around his hips.

"Keep. Goin'." Pickles growls through clenched teeth.

Their mouths meet in something more bite than kiss. Charles pushes the pent up anger and confusion and sorrow through his body, snags his teeth in lips that grimace with discomfort. He knows he's hurting the man but if that's what Pickles wants, then by god that's what he'll get.

When Pickles comes Charles does not savour the twitch of muscles around him. He pushes on, into the discomfort of a body that he knows is over stimulated. Pickles whines and squirms beneath him and he sinks his teeth into the man's neck enough to bruise. Skin and wetness slap together, a counterpoint to ragged breaths and animal groans. A drop of sweat falls from Charles' nose and he licks it from Pickles' red cheek, the salt tang a distraction, just enough to spur him forward. He can feel the ache in his core, the need building painfully past its desired peak, but he'll be damned if he gives in so soon. He pulls almost all the way out and slams himself as deep back in as he can. Once, again, as many times as he can force his aching body to make the motion. Under him Pickles is writhing, half a word catching in his throat with every vicious thrust. Blunt nails dig red furrows over Charles' back and he repays them with teeth nearly meeting in the skin of Pickles' ear lobe.

Charles hisses into that ear, no words, only pained frustration. With half a sob, Pickles arcs and writhes under him.

"Ch-Charlie..." he mewls, tears at the corners of his eyes.

Groaning into the man's sweat damp neck, Charles lets himself go in a release both exquisite and painful. His body jerks and spasms through the aftershocks of Pickles' second orgasm. He collapses, gasping, and slowly feels the heat and stickiness of overtaxed bodies bleed back into his awareness.

"Pickles..." he says thickly.

"Don't." The tears are pouring down his reddened cheeks. "Fuckin’...don't say it!"

"I hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

The howl of grief is muffled in Charles' neck but he hears it with every part of himself. Tears and snot burn against sweat cooled skin as Pickles screams, shaking arms and legs crushing Charles against him. He can't leverage their bodies into anything like comfort and simply lets his weight fall, crushing them into the carpet. Fingers dig at his scalp, pull in his damp hair, and all he can do in kind is stroke his thumbs over Pickles' temples, the only part he can reach.

"Ya said ya'd be here!" Pickles sobs. "But ya weren't! Ya... ya fuckin' died and left me alone!"

"I know."

"Ya fuckin' lied to me, Charlie!"

"I know."

...

In the shower Pickles is curled around himself, eyes unfocused as the water runs down his bruised skin. With his arms folded over his stomach, shoulders hunched, Charles can finally see the thing he's been missing. The man he loves is little more than an animal trying to shield a devastating wound. He runs a washcloth between Pickles' legs gently, relieved to find no blood in spite of everything. In silence he sponges away the sweat and grime of days unwashed and feels like he might never be clean again. 

Pickles lets himself be patted dry and led to the queen sized bed, its sheets still musty from the months of disuse. His docility is unnerving, unnatural in a man who’s done nothing but fight and be contrary even to his own detriment since Charles met him. Sitting beside him, Charles takes Pickles’ chin in one hand, gently but firmly forcing green eyes to meet his. 

“Pickles. I am not a weapon for you to use against yourself. Don’t do this again. Understand?”

A thick swallow. “Sure.”

“Pickles.”

Shuddering breath, and then: “I still dream about that last kiss, Charlie. Wake up...tastin’ yer blood.” Hesitantly Charles folds his arms around the man, pressing his head into the crook of his neck. “I dunno what to do with shit like that. And now yer...here. Like it ain’t never happened. But it did, Charlie. It did.”

Voice calm, Pickles shivers violently in his arms. 

Charles thinks back to that dreadful night, the haze of smoke mingling with the blood in his eyes, the ringing in his head slowly being consumed by a pounding in his ears. He’d been so very afraid, the animal terror of a rat in the eagle’s talons. And then, in the moments before everything faded, sweaty hands on his cheeks, lips pressing desperate to his. At the time he remembers thinking muzzily that it wasn’t such a bad way to go after all. 

“I thought about you every day,” he says into Pickles’ hair. “Wherever I went, knowing I would see you again. It, ah. Got me through.”

He huffs, almost a laugh. “And ya came back to this.”

“To this.” He runs his hand through Pickles’ dreads.

They lie down at opposite ends of the mattress, Pickles watching Charles like he might vanish at any moment. Uncertain, he stretches a hand across the sheets and Charles carefully tangles their fingers together. They fall asleep tenuously connected. Charles is not surprised to be awakened late in the night by a body startling from sleep in his arms. He makes a soothing sound while Pickles gasps into his chest. It’s still the best sleep either of them has had in months. 

...

He orders lunch for two the next day, burgers and fries set on the expanse of his desk. Pickles stirs from his place on the couch, afghan draped over his shoulders. Both men are wary and tired but the feeling of a guitar string about to snap has finally abated. Almost shyly Pickles dips a fry in mayonnaise and takes a bite, the first thing Charles has seen him eat since his return. 

The silence and the normalcy of it is suddenly too much and Charles finds himself dabbing at the corners of his eyes with a napkin before giving up entirely and placing his glasses on the desk to cover his brow with a hand. Pickles circles the desk without a word to fold him against his thin chest. Tears leave a wet patch on his black shirt.

"I'm sahrry, Charlie," he says. "Never wanted to hurt ya."

Charles nods, unable to speak, and feels something shift under his cheek.

"What...?" he manages to ask.

"Oh." Pickles fishes a scuffed gold locket out of his shirt. It pops open to reveal a tiny picture of Charles inside. "Only take it off to sleep."

Charles takes the locket in his hand, feeling the warmth and weight of it in his palm. "All this time?"

"Yeah."

He collapses against Pickles' warm torso and lets the tears fall, fingers tracing the locket's shape. Eventually his eyes run dry. He offers the damp napkin to Pickles when the other man sniffs loudly.

"So, uh," Pickles says, voice weak and watery, "is this seat taken?"

It's a tight fit with both of them in the desk chair. Pickles is half sitting on him, stealing fries off his plate instead of trying to reach his across the wide desk. They eat quietly, legs half asleep, and Charles feels that at last he is home.

  
  
  



End file.
